The Pitch Clock Struck Out

I had a rare disagreement with my high school friends last night. In a group chat, I mentioned that I gave up on Major League Baseball after they introduced a pitch clock into the game. I was a minority of one in the opinion that it was destructive to the game. The rest of the gang thought the clock–and the resulting shorter game times–was a saving grace. I didn’t sleep well. My friends are smart people, and when it comes to sports, they are A students where I just get by with Cs. I spent time wondering if I was just being a crusty old man whose opinion was fixed in a childhood love of the game, and would not bend, even in the face of reason. I finally asked myself: why does a pitch clock bother me so much? It occurred to me that perhaps it wasn’t the clock that bothered me so much as the need for a clock in the first place. The argument goes that the pace of the game is too slow. Non-clock levers had been pulled for several years with little or no effect on the length of the game.…